New Resilience Agenda gives Options to IDPs

UNDP’s New Resilience Agenda will help to give options to displaced Iraqis and refugees

A new Resilience Agenda has been adopted at the high level Resilience Development Forum on 8 and 9 November in Dead Sea, Jordan attended by delegations from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey and Syria. The pathbreaking Resilience Agenda presents five key principles for helping people impacted by the crisis in the Middle East.

The aim of the new agenda is to accelerate develpment investment, prioritize self-sufficiency, reinforce, not replace, local capacities, build new and inclusive partnerships and safeguard social cohesion.

“The resilience agenda is hugely important in Iraq,” said Ms. Lise Grande, UNDP’s Resident Representative. “We know that new types of programmes are needed to support the more than 3.2 million people who have been displaced since 2014 and the millions of Iraqi families who are helping them. This is why we will be doing more to help people cope with the crisis, recover from it and become strong enough to deal with whatever may happen in the future.”

Moderating a roundtable on Iraq, Ms. Grande added:

“For resilience to work, the international community needs to stand in solidarity with the Government of Iraq at this most crucial time in the country’s history. We need to move very quickly into innovative programmes including housing vouchers, social vouchers, perhaps even micro insurance and we need to help children continue their education.”

The Minister for Migration and Displacement, Mr. Jasem Mohammed Ali spoke during the high level panel of ministers, stressing the enormous needs of the displaced. During the roundtable, the Director General of the Ministry of Planning of Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Mr. Hayder Mustafa Saaid, discussed the situation in the KRG, which hosts more than one million displaced people.

Mr. Adam Abdelmoula, UNDP’s Country Director said:

“Iraq needs the good will and support of all the major international actors; it needs donors to make smart and strategic investment in resilience.”

As part of regional consultations in countries affected by the crisis in Syria, UNDP Iraq contributed to the Resilience Agenda through country based consultations that took place on 18 October in Baghdad and Erbil with 150 representatives from the Federal Government of Iraq, KRG, international organizations, private sector, NGOs and CSOs.